


i know you'll come for me

by pinuspinea



Series: Swan Lake remixes [8]
Category: Swan Lake & Related Fandoms, Лебединое озеро - Чайковский | Swan Lake - Tchaikovsky
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, F/M, Fairy Tale Retellings, Growing Up, Guilt, Loss of Innocence, justice for Siegfried?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-30
Updated: 2020-08-30
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:28:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26194162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pinuspinea/pseuds/pinuspinea
Summary: Odile does not forget the boy who she danced with at the ball.A story of guilt, growing up, and regret.
Relationships: Odette & Odile, Odette/Von Rothbart (Lebedínoye Ózero | Swan Lake), Odile & Von Rothbart (Lebedínoye Ózero | Swan Lake), Odile/Prints Siegfried | Prince Siegfried (Lebedínoye Ózero | Swan Lake)
Series: Swan Lake remixes [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1824241
Comments: 4
Kudos: 13





	i know you'll come for me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Swan Lake comment club](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Swan+Lake+comment+club).



> Work is such a brain drain. I'm more than surprised I managed to finish this in two weeks, because I was certain it would take me quite a bit more time.
> 
> Dear Swan Lake comment club, I hope you enjoy this as much as I enjoyed imagining it up.

He wakes up before she does and studies her face while she is still asleep. Odette looks tired even when getting rest, still harried by what happened some months ago.

It's still hard to believe she has been his wife for only that time. Every time he wakes up with her curled up against him, his heart still skips a beat, and every morning when she remains a human, he is struck by how beautiful she is.

Her eyes flutter behind closed lids. He brushes hair off her face and feels her curling up against him, and a smile curls on his lips when he feels her warmth.

She swallows thickly and he rubs circles into her back while waiting for her to wake up properly. Her breathing stutters for a moment and she presses her face against his chest.

"Good morning, darling," he murmurs and kisses her forehead. Odette breathes through her nose. Her breath feels warm on his skin not unlike the ring that finally rests on her finger. She shivers a little and he keeps rubbing those circles into her back.

The morning is oh so still and quiet, and together, they listen to the rain and wait for her to feel a bit better again. Only then do they finally get up. He helps her get dressed and he kisses her lips softly, and she looks up at him and tries to form a smile, but it remains pale on her face.

In a few weeks she will feel better, he tells himself, and hopes it will be true.

* * *

They quietly observe Odile and how she is unravelling at the seams. Their daughter is almost as good at keeping up appearances as they are, but they can see her anger and sorrow coming out in bouts of rage or frustration. Odette seems at a loss at what to do, but then again, she has so many other things in her mind, doesn't she?

He tries to find ways for Odile to work on her anger in safety, without risking her hurting herself, but more and more commonly, Odile flinches at magic lessons and looks at him with distrusting eyes, and eventually, he decides she will just need some time.

He's standing on the shore observing the lake when Odette eventually comes to him. She's still hesitant, always wary of the lake's depths ever since the prince drowned in it, and she never lets herself touch the water again, seemingly afraid of the consequences.

Her eyes are distant again as they look at the water. He wraps his arm around her tiny waist, and she presses her head against his shoulder. They are quiet for a long while, him observing her, her observing the lake.

"It's not just Odile that's bothering you, is it?" he asks eventually. Odette shakes her head an imperceptible amount and remains quiet for a moment longer, but he knows her well enough that she is simply searching for words. A small sigh leaves her lips.

His eyes enquire for her thoughts, and for a moment, she looks torn between speaking her mind and remaining silent, but eventually, she turns a little in his grip so that his hand rests on her stomach.

The spell is warm between the two of them. She shivers and looks at the light glowing underneath his hands, the same light that glowed under his hands so many years ago, a light that tells him all he needs to know.

He has known for a while already, but she hasn't said anything, hasn't confirmed what he has wanted to know for certain. He isn't angry about it. She has still searched for comfort from him, asked for his help in all her wordless ways, sought for him when she has been too overwhelmed by their life nowadays. She's needed time to get used to how things are now, and finally, she is telling him for certain.

He looks at her anxious face softly and caresses her cheek with his thumb.

"This time we will have a son," he says and kisses her brow.

She presses tightly against him and buries her face in his neck.

* * *

Odile knows things have been tense outside their small world that is dominated by the lake. She knows it from the conversations she overhears her father having with guests that appear unannounced and from the way villagers quieten when Odile passes them during her much too short visits.

Eventually, there comes a day when her father takes her back to the castle that looms in her dreams. Odile needs only to step out of their carriage to be overwhelmed by her memories, but there is no time for that right now. Her father is already walking towards the palace doors, and she meekly follows him.

She's not needed for long at the meeting, just long enough to mutter a few words about that night and how the prince was acting, and almost like that, she is dismissed while her father is still asked to stay. Odile leaves him with a worried look in her eyes and then she wanders the tall rooms of the castle, lost in thought.

She ends up in the ballroom again, and she stands there, all alone in the daylight, observing the room properly. There is no hurry now. There is nothing but time to look at this place where her life changed irrevocably. Now she can see the patterns in the floor, the paintings on the wall, the glitz and glamour that was hidden by a mass of people the last time she was here, and her carefully crafted mask of indifference comes tumbling down when tears start gathering in her eyes.

She thinks about that night and dancing on the arms of a charming young prince, a prince who had such a wonderful smile. She thinks about how her heart fluttered and how he looked at her, with adoration and tenderness, and she wonders what could have been had she not been too angry, had she stopped herself from giving the order that ended up taking the beautiful boy away from her.

"Are you all right?" an unfamiliar voice asks, and Odile turns on her heels. She looks at the faces of people she has a hard time placing until she remembers having seen them at the ball, having seen them spending time with the prince before he came to her.

The prince's friends come closer. There is a tall boy amongst them who seems to recognise her even without her party dress, even dressed in full mourning for the first time in her life, but she supposes someone could have seen her come in with her father. It wouldn't be strange at all if one of them wanted to know more about what happened to the prince.

Odile is sick of thinking about Siegfried constantly.

"We heard you were there," one of the girls hesitates, "when he…"

Even they don't know how to say it aloud, so how could his murderer ever do that? Odile takes in a shaky breath and tries to calm her nerves, to convince herself of the fact that these people could never guess the truth, but that is hard. She feels like a fraud about being upset and missing the boy as much as these people do.

"I was," she says quietly and swallows thickly. "We saw him go under the surface."

Her tears spill over with a wrecked sob that stems from the hole in her heart. The prince's friends come to her and wrap her in a hug, and together, they grieve for the boy who deserved so much more, so much better than what he ended up getting.

Odile wishes there was something to ease her guilt, but there is nothing to make her feel better about drowning the boy with the happy smile.

"Odile," she hears her father's voice. The prince's friends lower their arms and look at her with tears in their own eyes and sorrow blatant on their faces, and Odile tries to smile her thanks to them but her lip wobbles too much.

She dabs her face dry of tears as she walks over to her father, and he glances at the prince's friends and gives them a nod of recognition, and then they leave.

In the carriage, Odile closes her eyes and thinks about spinning endlessly in Siegfried's arms.

* * *

The days go by too sluggishly yet the nights pass in the blink of an eye. Odile traps herself in their home and fears what will happen the next time she will leave, if she'll ruin things again, if she'll commit some other faux pas that will have her father looking at her with a burrowed brow and her mother glancing in her direction with eyes that are much too tired nowadays.

She's supposed to be young and happy and carefree, supposed to attend dinner parties at other people's homes, but instead, she finds it increasingly difficult to even step outside. The days are the worst. She feels like the light will show all her mistakes to everyone.

During the evenings, she gravitates towards the shores of the lake just like her mother does, but she never stops to stare at the water, simply walking in endless circles while thinking about the prince.

He is in her thoughts all the time, nowadays. She sees his smile in sunshine, sees him trapped in the fancy decorations of her father's house, but on the shores of the lake, she feels him close to her.

His presence is surprisingly kind, considering what she did to him.

She knows she should stop it, but it's so hard to forget him when everything around her reminds her of him, and eventually, she comes to a startling conclusion; if she ever wants to stop thinking about what she did, she must leave the lake.

Odile stops on the shore and stares at the reflection of his face on the surface of the water, and she closes her eyes and shivers.

Tomorrow morning, she will be far from this place. If she doesn't leave now, she never will, and that is the only thing that keeps her from collapsing and stopping herself as she writes her parents a hasty note, packs her most important things in a weathered bag, and leaves like a thief in the night.

* * *

Von Rothbart finds Odette in the kitchen. She looks like she's somewhere far away as she passes a hastily written letter to him, and he reads silently their daughter's message.

They stand there for a long while, lost and searching for words, and they both wonder if they could have done more to make Odile stay.

But there are no answers to such questions as theirs.

* * *

He observes Odette during quiet moments when she almost forgets that he is there, and eventually, he has to admit that she is not as well as she pretends to be. He sees it in the way her breathing sometimes stutters when guests mention their wayward daughter or when they speak of the prince, and he sees it in the way she slows down when passing Odile's room.

Eventually, he pulls her into his arms and into his lap, and she sits there in heavy silence, trying to find comfort in being held yet struggling with the fact that he wants her to speak, to tell what is going on inside her mind.

No one else than he even knows that she is pregnant. They would have told Odile very soon, but she left, and now Odette struggles to even speak about the child with him.

"Things were supposed to be fine," she murmurs eventually. He listens to the echo of her words. "Easier now than before."

He should have known this would bother her.

"We used to live so differently for such a long time, Odette," he says delicately and studies her serious and pale face. "It takes time to get used to how things are now, and so many things have changed since the spell was broken."

She frowns and curls up against him. The fabric rustles and will most likely crease, but neither of them is thinking about that. She listens to his breathing for a moment and he wonders where her thoughts are leading her.

"Would you change anything?" Odette asks. "If it meant Odile would have stayed?"

He's surprised Odette is brave enough to ask this question.

"It's useless to think about what could have been," he murmurs. "We both know that."

Odette closes her eyes and nods her head. She knows what he means even without asking for clarification. They have both wondered about futures that could have been had things gone just a little differently, and those thoughts have brought them nothing but pain.

It doesn't make it any easier to not think about them, though.

"They say you were his tutor," she murmurs, eyes still closed, head resting against his shoulder. "That you were his friend."

He is silent for a long while. She sighs and curls tighter into herself.

"Could you find Odile if you tried?"

This one is easier to answer.

"Would you truly want that?" he asks her. She is surprised by the question, but she still considers it carefully, not accepting the immediate reaction as the truth. Odette opens her eyes and looks at him.

"The world is big and she is still young," she says with worry in her beautiful eyes. He nods his head, understanding Odette's fear almost as if it was his own.

"Odile is powerful and more mature than you think, Odette. She can keep herself safe, and in any case, we would have had to let her leave at some point."

Odette's hands shake in her lap. She twists and worries them, and eventually he takes hold of them and brings them to his mouth. He kisses the delicate and thin skin carefully, trying to ease her worries.

"Will they all leave us?" she asks in a small voice. He kisses her hands one more time, and then he lowers his hand to rest on her stomach and the growing life inside. She is afraid of a future where they will continue to lose their children, where they will have to deal with an empty house where previously their home was so full of life and colour.

"Eventually, they will," he says with a heavy heart. He wipes away the tear that spills onto her cheek, and then he caresses it for a moment. "They will all leave us in the end, but perhaps some will return."

Perhaps, one day, when Odile has travelled far enough and had enough time to heal, she will come back home to them, and then they can be a family again. Perhaps that day is far in the future, perhaps not too long from now. Perhaps Odile will be like a stranger when she returns to them, or then she may be just another version of herself.

But one day, she will return to them. He is certain of that. They simply need to be patient.

* * *

Odile traverses far and wide. She lets her routes be dictated by her whims, and soon enough, she has crossed so many borders and entered so many new lands that she has lost count of them all. She visits cities where they speak languages she has never heard of before, she listens to accents that make the words she knows sound oh so different, and she finally feels like she can breathe.

She is on the look for a new destiny for herself and will let nothing stop her. People flock to her, sometimes worrying about a lone woman travelling by herself, sometimes trying to take advantage, but she is powerful and knows how to protect herself, knows how to command the magic in her blood.

The world is even more wide and wondrous than she ever imagined, and Odile cannot wait to discover all the things her father has sometimes reminisced about during cool autumn nights when he is most likely to be swept away by his memories of the time before the lake and her mother.

Odile goes to bed in the evenings and dreams of Siegfried, but now, so far away from the lake and the castle, she is less and less bothered by those dreams. Eventually, they come less and less often. She finds new things to think about, new ideas to occupy her mind, new boys to take up her time.

But she still misses the one she cannot have, and still, she misses home. She misses her mother and her father, and she misses the home she lived in for her entire childhood. She misses the lake during afternoon hours and early evenings, and she misses the swan maidens that were her friends. She misses languid days of doing whatever crossed her fancy, intense studying in the library, sorcery lessons with her father, and her mother telling her stories of a life lived so long ago.

She simply misses how life used to be before this all happened, and it hurts to know that even if she returns home, things will never be the same again. There is too much hurt between them all, so many wounds that cannot be healed, but even so, they still are a family.

It takes her quite a while before she decides to head back home, but when she does, it's easy to gather her meagre belongings and arrange for a place at a post carriage.

* * *

This second pregnancy of Odette's is much more difficult than the first one, though easier in some ways. She is sicklier, or perhaps she simply is more willing to show how she is not feeling all too well. Odette feels nauseous from many foods and scents, but those things are easier to get used to than the other symptoms.

She is clearly nesting. Last time she barely worked on the nursery, and now she is constantly working at something until her eyes burn with exhaustion. He often has to pull her away, but he is relieved that Odette seems to find this child's arrival easier than Odile's.

Sometimes, they even have quiet conversations about their future together. Odette occasionally asks him whether the child will be a sorcerer just like he and Odile, and he has to admit that these things can never be said for certain until the child is born.

They talk about clothes and names and how they will raise the child, but the rounder Odette's stomach grows, the more tired she seems to become. She says nothing aloud, of course she doesn't, instead opting to handle it on her own.

She will wrap herself in a warm shawl and waddle over to the lake during moonlit nights, and she will caress her stomach and mumble words he cannot hear from that distance, always quieting when he comes.

Nowadays, she looks so old and tired. Nowadays, she looks like she has seen too much. How he wishes he could make her forget what happened, how he wishes she wouldn't blame herself for what happened, yet she still does.

At the shore of the lake, they will stand together until she eventually shivers and takes his hand into hers. Her skin is cool, almost cold. The surface of the lake is sometimes frosty during the mornings and the shores have started to ice. Small puddles left by the waves are frozen solid when the first light of dawn arrives.

But now it is the night, and he takes her back inside. Together, they'll sit in front of a warm fire, and he will rub her skin until it is soft and pink again. She will sit there, pliable under his hands, and he will steal a kiss or two, and she will look at him with softness and trust, and together, they will go to the bedroom.

It's so easy to live with her, so very easy, though she still struggles. It is so new, so very new for them both. Soon, their son will join them. Soon, their life will be changed again.

Sometimes he wonders how much has changed in just under a year and a half, and he hopes this will last as long or even longer than their life before the spell was broken.

* * *

But there are days when Odette cries alone, trying to hide away from him. There are days when she squeezes herself until her muscles are knotted and her face is strained, and only when she is alone does she let the tears come.

He tries to help her, tries to make her happier, but it's so hard to know what she wants when her eyes are always so guarded and when she so rarely says what is troubling her. Eventually, he has to admit to himself that she needs something more than just him, something other than their lake.

That is why he takes her for walks into the forest, each one a little longer than the previous one. He holds her hand and uses his magic to keep them warm, and slowly, the lake that is cracking with cold is left behind.

Farther and farther away they go, and slowly, Odette starts to learn to live with that. She's already gotten used to other people, and once her legs are too wobbly to carry her properly, he prepares the carriage and together they ride in the frosty woods, her curled up under a blanket and leaning against him, lazily looking at the world.

The town folk talk of them, not just because of the sudden way their daughter left, but because Odile wanders outside while she is so heavy with child. They gossip horribly, but Odette never hears that, that he makes certain of. He walks with her through marketplaces and gives her gifts, and sometimes, she looks at him and gives him a little smile.

She still cries when she thinks he doesn't realise it, but after each time, she seeks him out and curls up against him. He will read her poetry and make her tea, and together, they will look at the freezing lake and wait for the future.

* * *

Odile comes to home after a long night spent dozing in a post carriage and with a horrible crick in her neck. She brushes off the dust from her skirts, gathers her bag, and starts heading towards their home from the village.

It's a cold and frosty morning. There's some powdery snow on the ground here, though where she arrived from, snow was still yet to come. Sometime during the night when she managed to dream for a moment before being rudely awakened by the jolting of the carriage they crossed over to where winter is no longer just a promise in the air.

Her boots are far too summery for this leg of the journey, and with gladness she thinks about what awaits at the end of this forest path. Home is not that far away anymore, and there she will see her mother and her father again, and there she will curl up in front of a warm fire with a warm drink in her hands.

She stops underneath the trees when the house comes to sight from behind a bend in the path. It looks different than before. Odile studies it for just a moment, but the nippy air makes her hurry to the door.

The familiar thump of wood against ancient frame tells she is home again, and she is assaulted by the smell of her father's books and her mother's favourite tea. She lays her bag down on the floor, rubs warmth into her cool fingers, and heads towards the kitchen.

Her father is there, dazed and swaying on his feet as he makes tea. He looks up in surprise and blinks and nearly drops the tea pot, but Odile's magic catches it before it can break on the hard floor. She barely has time to make it float onto the table before her father is already giving her a tight squeeze.

"Oh, you have no idea how happy your mother will be," he murmurs with a smile and then gathers the tea tray. Odile follows her father across the house into their bedroom and stops at the door.

Her mother is leaning heavily against the window, eyes closed in a focused look. She breathes slowly and her father approaches, murmuring soft nothings to Odette. It takes almost a minute before her mother opens her eyes and sees her, and a bright smile comes over her sweaty and rounded face.

Odile keeps staring at the roundness of her mother's stomach, and then she realises her mother is crying and clutching her father, and so Odile rushes across the room.

Her mother has so much happiness and sadness in her eyes, and for a moment, Odile thinks that perhaps they will be all right again one day.

* * *

Winter nights are dark and cold, and no night is as dark as the night of the day her baby brother is born. Her father is frantic for most of the day, refusing to leave her mother's side, and her mother is so focused that she barely notices anything.

When it is over, Odile is allowed to hold her brother for a moment while her father heals her mother, and then she gives her brother back to her parents. Her mother seems enchanted by his fingers and his father is smiling gently at them all.

Odile slips away and walks over to the shores of the lake. The ice is thin still and it glitters in the moonlight. The snow is like crushed diamonds spread all over white velvet, and her breath forms clouds of ice all around her.

Odile stares at the ice and what lies beneath, the water so deep, and she closes her eyes and believes, and then she dives through the ice.

The water is so cold it seizes every muscle and makes a bubble of air escape her lungs, but Odile dives deep, always deeper, where the prince is waiting for her. She reaches for him and feels a cool hand in her own, and she starts kicking her way towards the surface.

Her hand pounds the ice until it hits air. She follows that route with Siegfried, and they both shiver as they crawl out of the lake onto the shore. Her hair freezes into icicles. Siegfried's lashes are of sugar and frost, and his lips are as blue as hers in the moonlight.

He smiles at her and hugs her tightly, and they stumble back into the house, leaving behind the hole in the ice and the lake where no creature lives any longer.


End file.
